"Superman"

 ☆☆½ 

Every generation, it's said, gets the government it deserves. The same, it appears, is true for Superman, whose debut in comic books was followed quickly by on-screen appearances, first in animated shorts, a serial, and some cheesy B-movies that captured Superman as a hero for a post-Depression and post-War America.

After a TV series came, of course, Richard Donner's 1978 film Superman — a sincere, even simple hero in a world that had been rocked by moral, ethical and political complexity. Superman was a salve. But the sequels got progressively worse as studios chased dollars. When the films collapsed came TV shows that reformatted the story not just for the small screen but for teen audiences.

By the 2000s came the age of the franchise, when studios started to please shareholders and equity investors, showcasing "risk aversion." Superman movies largely gave way to superhero movies. Marvel took the spotlight. Despite attempts to revive him, Superman seemed an anachronism.

Now, James Gunn, who helped make Marvel into the juggernaut it became, particularly with the jokey, music-driven Guardians of the Galaxy movies, has moved to DC, and is the primary creator behind the newest version of Superman. It should come as no surprise, then, that Superman has, for a generation that grew up on Marvel movies, become, well, a Marvel movie — not just any Marvel movie, but a jokey, music-driven one. In 2025, Superman is less a Superman movie than a superhero movie, determined to fit into the mold that has been created by previous films. It's a movie made to please a Wall Street investor, first and foremost.

This Superman is anchored by the formidable, appealing, comfortable presence of David Corenswet. He looks and feels just right in the role of Superman, the alien (we are told, over and over and over) come to Earth to do good deeds. He is, without doubt, the best part of this Superman. More than anyone who has donned the cape since Christopher Reeve, he looks, sounds and behaves the parts of both Superman and Clark Kent.

He does that in spite of working with a script that goes more or less disastrously wrong from the start. This isn't an origin story for Superman — we're expected to know a lot of his background going in, and the movie cuts corners in its first scene, giving us a written prologue that establishes we're already 33 years into the Superman story. There's no scene-setting, no exposition, no introduction to characters; Superman jumps right in and expects us to keep up.

That's mostly all well and good, except it gives us no emotional center to the film — we don't know what this Superman's personality is, what he believes in, who he is, only the trope that's in our heads when we walk into the auditorium. Superman and Lois Lane? They've been dating for three months when this movie starts. Superman's secret identity? It's hardly a thing, and Lois knows it, anyway. Lex Luthor? He's the bad guy — you don't need to know why.

The first third of Superman is an abject disaster, skimping on characterizations, plot set-up and dramatic exposition. These aren't small things for a movie to dispense with. Eventually, Superman gets going, though it seems almost by accident. None of the actors are given any time to create characters, the movie assumes you'll do the heavy lifting. This proves particularly problematic for Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, who never develops as a character throughout the entire film. She's plucky, she's got the voice down, and Brosnahan does more than try, but this Lois isn't much more than window dressing.

She's lost in a film that has far too many characters — other superheroes from the "Justice Gang"; not just Lex Luthor, but his henchmen and cronies; warring (and fictional, lest the film offend anyone) nations somewhere in some weird part of the globe where Eastern Europe abuts Pakistan, plus a host of other minor players who become all but impossible to keep track of. By the time the movie reveals a — SPOILER ALERT — dark and evil clone of Superman, the whole thing feels off the rails.

As Superman encounters black holes, proton rivers, "pocket universes," and much more, it's almost impossible not to long for the simplicity of putting one hero up against one grand villain until Superman wins and proves he's fighting for truth, justice and the American Way.

It's hard to know what this movie wants to be, except, of course, a franchise extension, a lucrative new effort to tell a Superman story for a new generation.

But like I said up front, every generation gets the Superman it deserves — so this one seems particularly telling and disconcerting. It's a meaningless piece of "action-adventure" overstuffed with CG monsters (and, sadly, a CG dog, who's adorable despite not being an actual dog at any time); saddled with the dullest, most generic and least inspiring musical score in Superman history; and directed by a man whose overriding objective is to "extend franchises," not simply make good movies.

At its best, this is an entirely adequate Superman movie, one that looks and feels like a Marvel movie, one that is, first and foremost, a superhero movie in the ways that bean-counters like best. It's essentially risk-free. It's designed to maximize value, to inspire consumer products, and to do very, very well on streaming — which is where it will find its largest audience, who will be forgiving, uncritical and largely unaware that 47 years ago the movies proved Superman could be a real movie star.

Nearly a century after he was created, Superman deserves so much better than this. David Corenswet deserves so much better than this. It's frenetic, it's illogical, it's slavishly faithful to its comic-book origins — and it's always entertaining. It's the Superman this generation deserves.

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird ... it's a plane ... it's an IP-forward entertainment franchise extension with strong consumer product potential and long-term revenue-value as a streaming title!

Viewed July 20, 2025 — AMC Burbank 16

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